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"How To Deal With Airport Stress"

- by Neil Stelling B.Sc, MBA - Marketing Manager, DigiLectual Inc. ==> http://www.cheap--airline--tickets.com

© DigiLectual Inc. 2004

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Your flights booked, and now it's airport time. Airport's can be stressful places nowadays, and these tips are designed for stress reduction...

* Leave home early

Airport stress starts moment you leave home. Don't sit in traffic watching minutes tick away. Aim to arrive at airport two hours early (usually required for International flights). Then if there's traffic delays, you've still got plenty of time.

* The check-in Line

Now you've arrived, next step's check-in. Usually, there's multiple lines you can choose from. Which looks quickest ? Maybe longest line is quickest ? Here's a couple tips. If you see lots of families and children in a line, avoid it. By time they've found all their tickets, and sorted their luggage jumble, they've taken twice time of a couple or single person.

Look for a short check-in line that's not easy to see. Look at each end of check-in aisles, and maybe there's a valid check-in hidden by a pillar, that few people see. Happened to me just recently, and cut a half hour off my check-in time - a half hour I spent relaxing in bar.

* How long to walk from lounge to gate ?

Maybe I should publish a guide to 'walk-time' at different airports ! I've walked anything from 2 minutes to 20 minutes after a call to Gate.

A few months ago, I wrote about ingenious styles of customer service that every business should know about, mostly because their employees were inflicting them on their customers.

For instance, I warned about "in your face customer service" and "run for cover customer service", two equally effective opposites...like pouring too much sugar on your Cheerios one day, and pouring too much cayenne pepper on them next.

I also warned about "do-it-yourself-extortion", "consistent filibuster customer service", "Invisible Man customer service", "present-at-attendance customer service", "customer service on steroids", and "satirical customer service".

You will have to read about these clever anti-sales pitches at: http://www.thehappyguy.com/customer-service.html , because today I want to tell you about a 100% revolutionary approach to customer service that my wife and I discovered in a village high up in mountains.

We were on our annual honeymoon, a three-day escape from parenthood to lick our wounds and give our tattered spirits a chance to recuperate.

To tell truth, weekend was more like a marriage encounter. It gave me a chance to find out just who is that strange woman passing me in hallway at full throttle, pinching her nose and radiating sweet smell of mushy diaper as she whooshes past. And it gave her chance to discover even stranger man who blows a muffled "Oof!" every time Little Lady invents a new "Hop On Pop" dance move.

Check-in at fairly expensive Resort-on-the-Edge-of-Nowhere was 4:00 p.m., and it was made very clear that we would not be welcome until then. It's always an ominous sign when a resort begins by warning you when you will not be welcome, so we arrived at 4:00 p.m..

At 6:30 we stopped by front desk on way to dinner to request an additional pillow. Being in a sleep-related establishment in, we figured there would an off-chance that this request might be reasonable.